This study investigated effects of instructions (explicit, implicit) in perceptual training of inexperienced baseball batters. Twenty-four novice baseball players served as participants; they were assigned to either an explicit instruction group (informed of critical task cues), an implicit instruction group (told only to react following their intuitions), or to a control group (no instructions). The two instruction groups received three sessions of 72 perceptual training trials. These trials presented videos of different baseball pitchers dynamics to which participants had to respond. Results indicated that participants level of awareness of certain anticipatory cues, critical to responding, was lower in the implicit instruction group than in the explicit instruction group, indicating that the intuitive-reaction instruction inhibited awareness of anticipatory cues. Furthermore, anticipatory skills, indexed by response times, improved only in the explicit instruction group. Results suggested that explicit learning is more effective than implicit learning when perceptual training is performed by novices. Finally, transfer effects of anticipatory skills to a new opponent were absent.
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